The Seasoned Learners Blog

This was our last class. I can’t call it a great success, but it was fun. I think I have nurtured six blogs, out of the nine students, but have links to only three. I’m hoping three more will show up eventually.

I was surprised to find at least two of my students were doing this on public computers. One of them is very successful. After finding out she had a degree in Computer Science I wasn’t too surprised. The other student is struggling, but seems determined. I hope she will succeed. I promised to help all of them by email, and hope they’ll take me up on it.

We spent about half of the class talking about building traffic to their blogs. Earlier in the week I sent an email with links to sites with traffic building information:

I am sure there are many more–possibly even better than these. I didn’t do an exhaustive search. Youtube has lots of good information, also.

For the remainder of the class time I worked with each student to try to make sure their blogs were off to a good start. I suspect this could have been profitably extended to another five sessions. If the class is offered again, I will recommend a ten week course.

Friday, February 22. This time our dear leader has tasked us to install a plug-in on the blog, so here’s a video of Pittsburgh’s own jazz trumpet sensation, Sean Jones, jamming with the Gerald Wilson Band at the Detroit Jazz Festival labor day weekend last September.

I was sitting in the back of the Apple Store at the Mac-for-Dummys Bar with my wetnurse trainer, when I heard a familiar high pitched laugh. I looked up across the counter and spied one of my OLLI classmates, Ginny Eskridge. “Ginny, what are you doing here?”, I asked.
“I’m gathering my wits today–going to learn how to blog. What are YOU doing here?”
“You know about Silver Streakers…I’m learning how to do a Silver Streakers blog on Osher,” I replied.
“Correct,” she answered. Then Her eyebrows shot up. She guffawed, “Silver Streakers? I thought you said ‘Silver SNEAKERS’!” Eyeing me with a sidelong glance, she said, “But you know the connotation of the word ‘Streakers’, yes?”
“Oh yeah”, i said, “it’s just sort of a pun, double ententre, you know. Hey–-we’re consenting adults here, right?”
“OK then…I don’t know how many people would want to see a bunch of geezers streaking–but we’ll do it if necessary!”
Having resolved the streakers misunderstanding to her satisfaction, she gushed, “I just love Osher! Osher’s the best…it’s the most fun and the most educational and it’s just…fabulous.”
Correct. And that goes for Ginny, too. She’s the most fun and she’s just…fabulous. By the way, her tee shirt says, “NO FIGHT FOR LIBERTY EVER STAYS WON”. I’m looking forward to hanging with her in September.

About

SSW is an interactive clearinghouse for ideas about the events, personalities, and issues that populate our Pitt OLLI constellation: thoughts, perhaps, on a course that the member is taking, or an idea the member might have for a course, or about an OLLI social function, or a suggestion of a better way to run things. SSW should be informative, relaxed, non-confrontational, and as fun as possible. It seems axiomatic that SSW can only be as valuable (and as enjoyable) as members choose to make it—by writing posts and making comments on posts, and by submitting OLLI-related pictures for publication.